Walker, FM, Dunhill, AM orcid.org/0000-0002-8680-9163 and Benton, MJ (2020) Variable preservation potential and richness in the fossil record of vertebrates. Palaeontology, 63 (2). pp. 131-329. ISSN 0031-0239
Abstract
Variation in preservation and sampling probability clouds our estimates of past biodiversity. The most extreme examples are Lagerstätten faunas and floras. Although such deposits provide a wealth of information and represent true richness better than other deposits, they can create misleading diversity peaks because of their species richness. Here, we investigate how Lagerstätten formations add to time series of vertebrate richness in the UK, Germany and China. The first two nations are associated with well‐studied fossil records and the last is a country where palaeontology has a much shorter history; all three nations include noted Lagerstätten in their fossil records. Lagerstätten provide a larger proportion of China's sampled richness than in Germany or the UK, despite comprising a smaller proportion of its fossiliferous deposits. The proportions of taxa that are unique to Lagerstätten vary through time and between countries. Further, in all regions, we find little overlap between the taxa occurring in Lagerstätten and in ‘ordinary’ formations within the same time bin, indicating that Lagerstätten preserve unusual faunas. As expected, fragile taxa make up a greater proportion of richness in Lagerstätten than the remainder of the fossil record. Surprisingly, we find that Lagerstätten account for a minority of peaks in the palaeodiversity curves of all vertebrates (18% in the UK; 36% in Germany and China), and Lagerstätten count is generally not a good overall predictor of the palaeodiversity signal. Vastly different sampling probabilities through taxa, locations and time require serious consideration when analysing palaeodiversity curves.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2019 The Authors. Palaeontology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of The Palaeontological Association. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) |
Keywords: | Lagerstätte; biota; diversity; sampling bias; preservation potential; linear model |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Earth Surface Science Institute (ESSI) (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 09 Oct 2019 12:39 |
Last Modified: | 25 Jun 2023 22:01 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Identification Number: | 10.1111/pala.12458 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:151942 |